Dysfunctional Family Theory, Vol. 2

堕落家族論 [Daraku Kazokuron] #2

by Mayo Tsurukame

FROM A KISS TO A KIDNAPPING?!After a drunk Sentaro kisses Touma, Touma faces Sentaro's past and future feelings. The question is, are those feelings mutual? Before they can reach an answer, things start to get rowdy with Touma's criminal organization, the Aida gang...and little Meguru disappears! As the two men work to get to the bottom of her disappearance, will their true feelings bloom?

Genres: Manga, Romance, LGBT, Queer, Contemporary, Boys Love, Fiction

228 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2024

About the author

Mayo Tsurukame (native: 鶴亀まよ) is a Japanese author of Boys' Love manga.
Her debut work is Mikami to Sato wa mada yamashikunai 三上と里はまだやましくない (2018), that is getting a second volume in 2022.
Other works include: Akari to kare wa nayamashii あかりと彼はなやましい (2019, 2021) and Perfect Propose パーフェクトプロポーズ (2020).

Reviews

[Lydia Ralte]

There can be confusing parts when you read a translation.

However, I do like the progress that this little dysfunctional family has made.

[delphine ☾☼]

bisexual dadies✌🏻

[Sol]

Such great characterizations & depiction of a found, unconventional family structure. And the art is just breathtaking. I'll miss these three!!!

[Rajin]

Eh. The whole manga was so mid, but cute at the same time!.
Little megu was so so cute.
I Didn't really care about the MC's relationship. But was cute too 🤷🏻

I mainly read it because of Megu and the art. And i loved them both

[Fortune]

La verdad esperaba otra cosa pero me gustó igualmente. Siento que con otro volumen o quitando lo del Yakuza hubiera fluido mejor o hubieran podido desarrollar más a los personajes y su situación.

[nicole]

stop, touma and sentarou's relationship is so precious to me. and i love how they decided to live with meguru despite the low possibility of them being the fathers after they'd encountered shouji.

[vin]

I found the development quite rushed, though it's a really fun and wholesome story, I had a great time reading it

[Julie]

Rating: 3.5*

I feel like everything suddenly picked up super fast and the relationship just jumped right in. Maybe they were running out of pages lol. I didn't mind it too much, but it definitely threw me off when it happened.

[charly]

LOVE LOVE LOVE. THE SLOWBURN AND JUST THEM BEING A FOUND FAMILY. JUST GENUINELY LOVE

[Lisa]

Once again, I looooved the concept, but I feel like the execution falls a bit short for me.

It felt like we were trying to explore way too many subplots for a story in two volumes… very interesting subplots though!

Because of that, we kind of sped through the solving of the problems. I mean even the MAFIA was involved and it was still pretty easily dealt with? Almost felt too easy!

Truly, I feel like it's mostly a pacing problem that could have been solved with more volumes!!

The only thing I wasn't exactly a fan of was the reveal about Sentaro's old feelings for Touma, because it made the shift in the relationship a little too "easy" I would say? It made Sentaro's current feelings less conflicting… I guess I just wanted them to be annoyed by each other for longer ahah. What can I say, I love mess.

But I'm glad we got to see a little more of Meguru, and even Ririko, which I wasn't expecting!

So basically, it didn't really go exactly where I thought it was going to go, and it felt a little rushed, but it was still pretty fun!!

[Paula (lovebookscl)]

Con Touma al volante este vol se centra en su POV y nos enteramos más de su vida, obviamente su pasado con Sentaro y Ririko (chismeeee 2.0). Siento que esta historia perfectamente podría tener otro vol más, pero creo que finaliza bien dentro de todo y sin muchas cosas pendientes.

El final me dolió un poquito, la conversación con Ririko y a quién estaba buscando para apoyarse en un momento donde seguro se sentía muy sola ;-; si hay algo que amo en una historia es: the character that haunts the narrative.

[Leila ✨]

Estuvo bien, fue una lectura rápida y entretenida. Nada que te vuele la cabeza tho.

3.5 de 5 estrellas.

[Devanshi]

That’s it??? I needed more.

[☆fran]

☆ 3,5 / 5 🌷

El dibujo me encanta, pero siento que la historia pudo ser mejor. De todas formas me gustaron los personajes 🌻✨

[Ana Maria]

Bien, aunque sin más. No se ha hecho pesado y eso lo agradezco.

[Asleepinhaze]

I love it~

Mmm yha. Aku suka dinamika mereka. Udah gitu aja :3 aku harap bisa membaca karya lainnya dari Mayo Tsurukame hehe~

[Jona Litjens❤]

4,5☆

[K]

This genuinely just feels like Buddy-Daddies-but-make-it-BL, and I'm pretty okay with that.

I enjoyed this second volume a lot. While the romantic relationship felt a tiny bit rushed, at least from Touma's end, I appreciated how much space was given to their backstory. Sentaro's crush was so obvious that Touma had been aware of it - not interested in reciprocating, but not bothered by it, either. Plus there was an emotion he couldn't quite pinpoint back then, when Sentaro disappeared from not only his girlfriend's life but from Touma's, too.

Regret, probably. The slightest realization that he was actually interested in Sentaro (as a person and a musician, anyway) and had liked the attention and open affection, but without being sufficiently in touch with his own feelings to interpret why things felt off when Sentaro fled like that.

When they talk about their feelings in the present - with Touma bringing the topic up, not letting Sentaro get away with forgetting the drunken kiss and confession - he admits Sentaro had no chance back then. The reality was that Touma wasn't in any sort of relationship headspace - he wasn't really "dating" Ririko, although he knew enough about relationships to tell her she'd messed up by sleeping with multiple guys at once without actually telling then she wasn't exclusive.

Touma came from a yakuza background, with a father who'd gone to jail, gotten kicked out of the family, and killed himself once he was released - and a mother who'd been hooked on drugs and had gotten her own teenage son arrested by recommending him to a job he didn't know was run by shady people. (That reminded me of Great Pretender, too.) I don't know why Touma's siblings weren't included more - I guess he wasn't trying to take care of them...? But it's clear his parents' choices and criminal history meant he had to give up on his dreams, and lost any sense of what a normal family life was supposed to look like.

So of course he doesn't feel ready to be a dad. Especially since he's still connected to the yakuza, even if only on the outskirts. That whole plotline was a little messy and kind of unnecessary, still, but added some interesting elements to his character.

One lingering question...with Touma losing the yakuza connection and Sentaro having quit his job, how are they going to...survive? Pay for a child? It was a little weird that the whole plotline about Sentaro's composing got dropped.

Still, even if the plot was thin in spots, I really enjoyed the characters and their bond. I liked Touma's unexpected surges of jealousy over whether Sentaro had liked Ririko more than him. And I wonder if her final decision about her daughter was some sort of way to atone for the past and get those two guys together? It seems obvious that neither of them was actually the father, and she had absolutely no reason to think that Touma would ever be a good dad, especially since she knew he was in the yakuza. But she chose them anyway, and ended up putting her daughter in the best possible family.

[Rosie49%]

Someone said it's just like Buddy-daddies bl version
AND I COULDN'T AGREE MORE
Lol, it's just they're canon.
well I'm still crashing out about Buddy-daddies not being canon😭
Seriously they're all so cute ughhhhh!!!! the most badass family lol

[Conti]

TENIA TODO PARA SER 5 ESTRELLAS PERO EL FINAL ME DEJO MAL SABOR DE BOCA😭

[Megan]

UGH 10/10 ✨

[Sandra]

Der zweite (und leider letzte) Band der Reihe, bleibt wunderbar storylastig, vertieft diese sogar noch eher - das war eigentlich eine ziemliche Überraschung :D nach dem Start hatte ich nicht erwartet, dass es überhaupt so eine gute Story um die beiden Kerle und dem Kind geben würde.
Natürlich ist diese nicht super deep, bei 2 Bänden, aber trotzdem wird mehr über die Vergangenheit geredet, deutlich mehr über Tomas Yakuza-Geschäft (ohne die typischen brutalen Yakuza-BL-Sachen) und mehr über die Patchworkfamilie, die sie gerade zusammen aufbauen.
Es ist wirklich sehr süß, gleichzeitig ernst, und da storylastig, eigentlich kaum Sex, bzw. keinen voll gezeigten - das ist mal erfrischend, eben weil hier soviel Wert auf die Familie gelegt wird.
Ich hätte mir fast noch mehr gewünscht, da die beiden Kerle sich auch ständig gegenseitig anmotzen, aber dann wäre die Reihe vermutlich in dieses übertriebene Drama reingerutscht. Daher ist es eben eine schöne kurze Story.

(Und das Mädchen ist wirklich geil drauf - ich bin ja generell kein Fan von Kindern im allgemeinen und von Kindern in Mangas schonmal gar nicht. Aber das hier war einfach echt gut, extrem nachvollziehbar in ihren kindlichen Reaktionen, und nicht nervig.)

[ℂ ✧]

Història que s'acaba convertint en BL de dos possibles pares d'una criatura de 6 anys que hauran de conviure amb ella arran de la recent mort de la mare (vividora, despreocupada i que no explica la veritat al testament). Un triangle amorós raríssim, amb gens de comunicació i comportaments egoistes totalment immadurs. Percebo zero química entre els protagonistes i només em lamento per la pobra nena, massa madura per a la seva edat, que no té més remei que conformar-se amb una família desestructurada... En fi, no m'ha agradat gaire ^^'

[Esmeralda]

Esperable. Ya tenía mis sospechas de quién era el padre, así que no fue algo sorpresa. Pero tal vez para otros sí lo sea.
Sobre Touma y Sentarou, fue lindo. Me gustó su relación. Aunque no sentí que la historia se centrara en su romance, sino en ellos formando lazos como familia. ¿Contará esto como spoiler? No lo creo. Después de todo, es un BL.

Lo vuelvo a decir: Sentarou es buena persona.

El final fue bastante meh, pero para el puntaje puse el ojo en toda la historia. Si bien hay momentos flojos, los que se tratan de ellos como padres son muy dulces. Esos recompensan a los otros.

[andrea]

i wish there was more >:<<
i actually loved the dynamics in the manga
i wanted to read more about their new relationship as lovers and partners as well as them as officially new fathers, see more scenes as them as a family, and see meguru grow up. also they were both like jobless at the end of the story.. and they have a kid.. soooooooooooooooo yea wanted to see what was up with that but there's only two volumes 💔💔 so i guess i'll never know

thank you random pinterest panel that led me to find peak

[Noelle Haycraft]

Woah!! Low key I thought that Touma's job wasn't associated with the mob but I was indeed proven wrong... Anyways!! Also though he was involved it wasn't in the way that I thought so that was very interesting. And I totally predicted the ending. But I feel like it was obvious so not too big of a brag lol

Happy Reading!

[Liv]

aaaarghh I'm so sad it's done already. I would've read 3 more volumes at least if there were any...
still a very cool and unique story tho, and surprisingly suspenseful in the second volume! love the dynamics between the kid and the "dads", overall very cool twist on a BL (Bi representation yeehaw)

[Mari]

Near perfect. Should have three volumes tho. I could read at least five volumes. 😠

[Lily Ackerman]

La historia en general es buena, pero creo que deja demasiados hilos sueltos, además de que el final no me terminó de convencer.

[Ruth Fernandez]

Chulísimo, de los que dejan el corazón calentito